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Is downloading Amiga ADFs from the TOSEC collection on the Internet Archive legal?

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First post, by WarMasterXX

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In my previous thread:
Need help with Batman games in DOSBox
I had announced that I thought I had legally obtained the DOS disk images for all the Batman games on DOS, only for the thread to be closed for obvious reasons. At the same time, someone mentioned the Amiga versions of Batman The Caped Crusader and Batman The Movie being far superior to the DOS versions. I looked at video comparisons and confirmed that the person spoke correctly.

I recently bought Amiga Forever so I can legally acquire the Kickstart ROM required to emulate Amiga games. I was going to also buy actual Amiga floppies of the two games plus Batman Returns so I could dump them myself, but then discovered to my horror how expensive and complicated that process is.

I see that there's a gigantic TOSEC collection of Amiga games and software hosted on the Internet Archive, uploaded by Jason Scott, one of the official higher-ups on the archive. If that's the case, you'd think downloading anything from that collection would be legal right? I'd love to be able to emulate the three games, but at the same time I'm trying to be as clean and legit of a gamer as possible, which is why I had to ask this question...

Reply 3 of 9, by dinth

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It entirely depends on the country you're living in. In some countries, you can download stuff as long as you don't upload anything, in other countries you can do that with music or movies but not with software, and I'm sure that there are places where it's illegal to download any pirated content from the internet. Also, in some countries having a pirated software on your computer is just a civil matter where you need to be sued by the copyright owner, while in other countries this is a criminal matter.
Archive.org T&C is just covering their liability, but most definitely this document is not above your local law.

Reply 5 of 9, by WarMasterXX

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Yeah, I hate to admit it but he's right. I'm just gonna play it safe and delete all the stuff I downloaded from archive.org.
I am gonna redownload the Batman DOS games as abandonware to make up for it, only because I have a much better chance of tracking down, buying, and successfully dumping all those games in the future. I already legally own Batman Forever and BF The Arcade Game, it's the floppy games that are hard to find...
Never Mind, I'm not gonna do that either.

Reply 6 of 9, by dinth

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Sorry if my post sounded llike a harsh reprimand, that's not what i meant. Ultimately you will most likely not get caught anyway and its only up to what you believe is morally right. I am also downloading games from archive.org or ExoDOS, quite a lot of them actually, but either i already own them somewhere else (physical, Steam or GOG) and i download ExoDOS archives for convenience, or im trying to buy them later one if i like them.

Reply 7 of 9, by brostenen

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Depends on what country you live in, and who owns the rights to the game.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 8 of 9, by WarMasterXX

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dinth wrote on 2021-06-30, 15:24:

Sorry if my post sounded llike a harsh reprimand, that's not what i meant. Ultimately you will most likely not get caught anyway and its only up to what you believe is morally right. I am also downloading games from archive.org or ExoDOS, quite a lot of them actually, but either i already own them somewhere else (physical, Steam or GOG) and i download ExoDOS archives for convenience, or im trying to buy them later one if i like them.

That's OK. I'm gonna go ahead and redownload the three floppy-based Batman games for DOS, because once again, I already own the CD-based games, and even though it'll take a long time to track down copies of the floppies to buy, I have a better chance of successfully dumping them legally.

BTW, Caped Crusader and Batman The Movie ARE on 3.5" floppies. I've seen a picture of Batman The Movie on them, and the manual for Caped Crusader states that that version exists...

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